I am a professor of strategy and leadership at the Tuck School of Business atDartmouth College, as well as the Faculty Director of the Tuck Executive Program. My academic degrees are from the London School of Economics (M.Sc.) and Columbia University (Ph.D.). When I’m not at Tuck working with some of the greatest MBA students in the world, I am an active consultant and speaker to senior executives around the globe, as well as an executive coach. My research and consulting work focuses on how to develop the world’s best talent, corporate governance, learning from mistakes, and strategies for growth. I’ve written 15 books and over 75 articles, including the #1 bestseller in the U.S. and Japan, Why Smart Executives Fail. Honors include being a Fellow of the Academy of Management, and I’m listed in the “World’s Top 25 Leadership Gurus.”

Man Bites Dog

Every now and then you see something that makes you take notice and say, “Well, you don’t see that very much.” Rarer still is when more or less the same thing happens multiple times, in different contexts. That happened to me recently when I read about Anne Lauvergeon, the former CEO of the French nuclear engineering company Areva. It seems that Ms. Lauvergeon is upset that her former employer has allegedly hired a private investigator to apparently see whether an acquisition she championed while CEO was nefarious in some way.

Ms. Lauvergeon: “I have been attacked, slandered and spied upon.” This she said, among other things, in a two-hour press conference, if you can imagine that. When was the last time a CEO held any type of press conference? But the man (or woman in this instance) bites dog story is that a CEO has let loose on her former employer. Usually there’s enough hush money (spelled, s-e-v-e-r-a-n-c-e) to keep the outgoing boss quiet, but not this time.

Image via CrunchBase

Even better is when Carol Bartz was fired as CEO of Yahoo. She let loose with a barrage of profanity about the “doofuses” on the board who couldn’t shoot straight. Leaving aside the fact that she was much more right than wrong, Bartz is Exhibit 2 for why man bites dog.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Our trilogy concludes with Michael Woodford, the former CEO of Olympus. In contrast to the women scorned at Areva and Yahoo, Mr. Woodford took it upon himself to launch a personal investigation into a series of acquisitions whose disastrous results were covered up by the old-boy network governing the Japanese company. He even tried to get his old CEO job back, an odd turn of events akin to a dog that chomps on his owner’s leg strolling over to his doggie dish to await dinner.

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